


let this whole town hear your knuckles crack

by GoldStarGrl



Category: Halt and Catch Fire
Genre: Bisexuality, Bullying, Gen, Homophobia, Origin Story, POV Second Person, Parent Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-09
Updated: 2016-09-09
Packaged: 2018-08-13 23:37:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7990402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoldStarGrl/pseuds/GoldStarGrl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They finally - finally - let you out of the hospital two days before school starts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	let this whole town hear your knuckles crack

**eight**

They finally - _finally_ \- let you out of the hospital two days before school starts. You barely have time to get used to walking outside, to being around people besides your dad and Dr. Mechling before you’re thrust back into the halls of Roosevelt Elementary School. The swarms of kids, the chairs scraping and the bell ringing and your teacher calling attendence - it’s almost overwhelming, all the moving parts and bright colors.

You raise your hand at _Joseph?_ , and in the row behind you Karen Becker whispers, in a harsh voice that’s not really a whisper at all, _Who’s that?_

You’re about to turn around, snap at her that you remember her. You remember she cries at fire drills and she has a nice smile and she brought you a little purple teddy bear when your class came to visit you in the hospital, back when people still came to visit. You're about to say if you can remember all that, why couldn’t she remember you, when another kid, Brian Seedling, beats you to the punch.

_That’s Joe. Remember? His looney mom tried to kill him in first grade._

You turn around and shove his desk back into his stomach, hard and fast. Dr. Mechling told you not to make any sudden movements, your latest round of staples might pop out of your chest, but you don’t care. It’s satisfying just to watch Brian gasp, the wind knocked from his body. The teacher shushes both of you, but doesn’t intervene, and Brian draws a line across his throat with his finger. _You’re dead._

You eat lunch, alone, in the library, thumbing through Choose Your Own Adventure books.

 

**eleven**

You know your dad won’t be home from work when you get off the bus, and you’re glad. You don’t want to explain to him the ink that stains your hands and the cuffs of your shirt, despite your best efforts to wash them clean in the boys’ bathroom. You collapse in exhaustion on the living room couch, letting your thousand pound-backpack roll off your aching shoulders, catching your breath with no one to bother you as to why.

They did again. They’re going to keep doing it, you know it. Because of that time in the gym class locker room last year, when two of the older guys, eighth graders, cornered you, boxed you in on either side and asked why you never took off your shirt, if you were some kind of faggot. When they smashed your head into the side of the shower curtain and accused you of checking out Ryan Shea when he wrapped himself in a towel. They didn’t let up no matter how many times you denied it. You weren’t, you weren’t.

(You were.) 

It doesn’t matter though, what stupid little-kid stuff they pull, no matter what your traitorous body is pointing you towards. They’re fucks. They’re _fucks_ , you spit, into the silence of your house. When nothing happens you get a strange thrill out of the curse word, the only one you know, and try it again. They’re fucking fuckheads who aren’t going to make you cry, or resign you to using a locker every day with _that word_ scribbled all over it. You spring up and focus your energy on a hunt for orange juice, pretending your back doesn’t hurt worse than it did that day you fell.

 

**fourteen**

The boy whose family owns the hardware store is a grade above you, and the two of you walk back from school in the same direction every day. You don’t talk much - you don’t even know his name - but you’ll make long, strange eye contact sometimes, the kind that sends your stomach fluttering like you drank a whole can of soda. Every day, he mutters goodbye to you as he stops off, and you continue on to your own house.

One afternoon in December, with the snow crunching under your boots, he stops and looks at you, at the end of the chain link fence that runs next to the store. Without a word, somehow, you know what’s coming. He grabs both your wrists and pushes you back against the fence with a metal _clank,_ and you’re kissing, really kissing, like a man and woman on TV, and you _like_ it. The winter wind whips against your cheeks, stinging and cold. It's a contrast with the warmth in your face, your stomach, under the twisted strips of flesh spanning your chest.

And then it’s over. He pulls away, his face suddenly falling, afraid. Afraid of _you_.

You feel a sharp pain against your shin, and it takes a moment before you realize he _kicked_ you, kicked you and ran away, stumbling into the hardware store, and you can still taste him in your mouth. That night you practice standing tall in front of the mirror, balling your fists so tight your fingers tremble, and you rewrite the story of your first kiss. No one got hurt and no one was cold and it was with a _girl_. 

No one can know it wasn't with a girl. Not if you want to survive.

 

**sixteen**

You go up to the roof for the first time in a long time during your first week of summer vacation, because Walter Cronkite said on the news that NASA completed another successful launch, and Gemini 4 was orbiting the planet as he spoke.

 _You’re not going to be able to see it._ Your father says, standing in the doorway of your bedroom. You opened the window as quietly as you could, planning to slip out with him being none the wiser, but of course he found out. He always found out. You expect him to grab you around your stomach and drag you kicking back inside, like he did when you were a little boy, but he doesn’t. Just sighs, with his hip pressed up against your doorframe.

Maybe it’s because you shot up like a weed over the spring, and at six-two and counting, you could easily overpower him. Or maybe he just doesn’t care.

It’s a nice night for June, not too humid or sticky, and the stars twinkle above you. You lie flat on your back, gripping a roof shingle with each hand, and stare up at them. Looking, searching for any kind of movement. You almost feel embarrassed in front of yourself. As if movement is equal to meaning.

Gravity can’t touch them up there, you marvel. You can fly and fly and never fall.

Your mom would love this, she always loved to talk about space, the cosmos, the great, expansive, unknown. You imagine her sitting next to you in that turquoise housecoat she used to wear, hair long and uncombed, pointing up. _Look at that, Joey. There’s something big, something beautiful out there. Can’t you see it?_

 

**eighteen**

It occurs to you that there ought to be a name for this, for the way you are. It occurs to you when your ears are being pressed warm on either side by Lucille Perozzi’s thighs, when your mouth is otherwise occupied, so you can’t voice it right away.

You let your hands slide up to her breasts - still in their bra, although that’s been promisingly pushed askew - and then rake them back down her stomach, over her smooth, scented skin. You _love_ this. You love her delicate features, her pink bow lips opening to gasp, her fingers curling in your hair. _Jesus Joe, JESUS._ She writhes on top of your cheap futon sheets, totally unaware Dan did the same thing when you went down on him last night.

(Dan’s the second smartest in your Mass Communications class. Lucille is the smartest. You’re working your way up the ladder.)

You loved the noises Dan made too. Not more or less, just in a different way, how he could pin you down the where Lucille melted under you.

You like fucking them both, you've decided. You like it too much for it to make you a freak, some lunatic whose body pleads towards every beautiful shape in a disco. It makes you _special._ One of the few. And you should get to name it, if you’re the one carrying it around all your life. You'll come up with a name and wear it like armor, against the guy who threw a beer bottle at your head last month or the girls who shrieked  _faggot_ when they walked in on Seth feeling you up in the basement of the Alpha Phi house. 

It’s a better project than all the ones waiting for you at IBM, in a office your dad first pointed out to you when you were fifteen and that made you want to lean into the nearest potted plant and vomit.

 _Joe? Hellooooo? Are you okay?_ It takes a second before you realize you’ve stopped moving, let your tongue fall. Lucille has hoisted herself onto her elbows to look down at you. You blink, smile before diving back in. _Of course, just thinking._

The next day, you duck into the computer science hallway - they don’t even have a building, just a hallway in the corner of the engineering one - and ask about changing your major. Someone calls someone who calls your father who drives up to your dorm and reminds you in no uncertain terms, in front of half the people in your hall, that he’s not paying for you to fuck around with magnets and motherboards. _There are people who do that for us, Joey. And besides, it's just a fad. Focus on business. Be realistic._

 _Don’t fucking call me Joey._ You seethe, and slam your dorm against his nose, but you don’t switch majors.

 

 **twenty**  

You hate the IBM Christmas party.

You hate kiss-asses and suck-ups asking about your schooling, your life. _Do you have a girlfriend yet Joe?_ _Are you excited to come work with your old man? Here, let us stuff you full of stale cookies someone’s idiot wife made until you explode._  

You extricate yourself as soon as you can, smiles and mumbled excuses, and down a plastic cup of spiked punch in an empty hall and toss it on the carpet. You make eyes at the daughter of another executive, Ellie, standing bored in the hallway just like you, and quickly you’ve got her hoisted up against the wall of the empty conference room, her legs and bunched-up nylons wrapped around your waist, and you feel good, or at least entertained, until she manages to pop the buttons of your shirt and freezes.

_Christ, what’s wrong with your skin?_

People have asked before. Men, women you’ve fallen into bed with. You only recently started taking your shirt all the way off when you fucked, because the scars caused so many momentum ruining-questions. _Car accident_ usually satisfies them. _Tried to jump a fence. Tried being the operative word _usually makes them laugh. You’re a good talker, a big talker, usually good and big enough to get out of anything you don’t want to engage with. 

But you’re thrown off, unprepared to battle with the disgust on Ellie’s face, the way she’s recoiled as far as the wall will allow her. And then her eyes get wide, and she _knows._

You can see a scene playing out in her childhood kitchen, her father coming home and mentioning to his wife _Joe Macmillian, you hear what happened to his wife and son? Woman went batshit, let her little boy fall off the roof, get damn near impaled on the fence. He might not make it._ You see Ellie's mother shaking her head, shocked but at the same time, smug. She kisses her husband, kisses her daughter coloring at the kitchen table, wrapped warm and comfortable in the knowledge that sort of thing would never happen to them. Ellie would grow up normal and safe and look at men she spread her legs for like they were something Other because of it.

You can't stand her looking at you like that. You can't stand being Other, not unless you're the one who decided that's what you are.

You let go of Ellie, causing her to skid gracelessly against the wall trying to catch her balance. You ignore the call of _what the hell_ and stalk down the hall, trying to will the elevator doors open with your mind.

_You’re getting out of here. Out of here, out of here outofheroutofhere._

Soon.

 


End file.
